If you need proof that pitching wins and losses are essentially worthless statistics, look no further than Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s numbers this season.
The Los Angeles Dodgers starter, now in his second season after signing a 12-year, $325 million contract with the Dodgers after being posted by his previous team, the Orix Buffaloes of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, has a 10-7 record, which really doesn’t reflect how good he’s been this season.
Especially this past week, when Yamamoto allowed one run on nine hits and two walks in 12 2/3 innings over two starts, striking out 15 — a weekly line that earned him World Baseball Network’s International MLB Player of the Week honors. He was credited with wins in both of those games, which you’d expect, given that he threw 5 2/3 shutout innings in a 3-0 Dodgers win at Tampa Bay on August 3 and seven innings of one-run ball in a July 28 5-2 win at Cincinnati.
But he’s still 10-7 on the season, despite a 2.54 ERA and a 1.04 WHIP in 22 starts, not to mention his 139 strikeouts, all of which he’s accomplished in 122 innings of work this year.
Over the course of the season, Yamamoto has been pinned with three losses that he can’t really be faulted for. He didn’t get any run support in the Dodgers’ 3-2 loss at Philadelphia on April 3, a start where he allowed one run on three hits over six innings. Later that month, he was assessed a loss against Pittsburgh despite allowing one run on three hits on April 25 in a game Los Angeles lost 3-0. An on June 19, Yamamoto allowed three runs on seven hits over 6 1/3 innings in a 5-3 loss to San Diego. With a little more run support, Yamamoto might have gotten a no-decision (another equally arbitrary statistic that is borderline meaningless) out of any of those games.
Either way, Yamamoto is living up to the hype that built in his final seasons in Japan. Twelve of his 22 starts this season have been Quality Starts, meaning that Yamamoto went six or more innings and allowed three or fewer runs — including the aforementioned losses to San Diego and Philadelphia. His ERA+, a measure of ERA adjusted to the pitcher’s home ballpark and league where 100 is the league average, is 169.
Most notably, perhaps, is that Yamamoto has allowed just 10 more hits than last season, when he allowed 78, despite throwing 32 more innings — and there’s still nearly two months of the season remaining.
There was plenty of doubt when the Dodgers handed Yamamoto a nine-figure contract despite never having thrown a pitch in Major League Baseball, but he’s out there proving, start after start, why he’s the $325 million man.
Photo: Yoshinobu Yamamoto throws during the fourth inning of a baseball game against the Tampa Bay Rays, Sunday, Aug. 3, 2025, in Tampa, Fla. (AP Photo/Jason Behnken)
